Wrapping things up...quilts, fingers, etc.

Here are the first few inches of the newest weaving.  I did this pattern before with blue and green, but circumstances arose that prompted me to do it again...I have wanted a chance to make another piece in some different colors.  The fact that this is a documented pattern is very cool--especially since it's in three colors and most of the European pieces are one color...boring.  Emma Compton was having difficulty with the pattern and since it's been so long since I did it, I didn't remember if I had made any adjustments--I had to warp it up to figure out what was going wrong.  The directions are pretty straight forward on this site, but they're wrong.  Sigh.  Maybe the creator has the cards warped up differently, but I set my loom up and I needed to turn the ODD cards first, then the EVEN, and start weaving from the home setting from right to left (opposite of everything she had done). In any case, it works great...note on that second diamond that there's a yellow thread sticking out funny.  Card 14 was threaded wrong.  I turned it 90 degrees backwards and now it looks perfect.  I've done a couple feet on it now, so it'll be just a few more days before it's done.

In the meantime, I've been working on a couple of quilts.  One for Lauri, which is a medallion round robin style.  I quilted the center part of the quilt in 3's and E's.  The outside border I quilted in rays of the sun and swirly wind.  I had a little trouble with one section of the border where the fabric was wrinkling.  I may pick that section out, steam it a little and then try again.  This is the lovely center medallion.

Here's the whole quilt top laid out on my bed.  It's a rainbow of happy fabrics!

Next on the docket is a pair of baby quilts for a customer I did some work for last year.  Linda D. has two baby showers to attend in April, so these two baby quilts are almost ready for gifting!  There's one girlie quilt and one generic gender-to-be-announced-later quilt (although it has butterflies on it).  I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I think I'll do an all-over swirly thing.  Or maybe I'll do the Oil Slick pattern again...the one with the snake tails.

Yesterday I got my birthday present in the mail--a cable to update my Geomate Jr.  It was a little more complicated than the directions said (a lot more downloading and registering), but eventually it said it was ready to go with all the latest caches from the Western US (including AK and HI), and I took it for a test-seek.  There's a cache that I have looked for nearly a dozen times near the kids' karate studio.  It got me closer and the hints made more sense, but it was still a DNF.  I wrote to the owner telling him that I've given up.  I'll try out a few more sites this weekend while I'm down having a Girlie Day with Jeanie and Lauri.  We're planning on getting fingernails, toenails, eyebrows, a little shopping and cocktails!  I can't wait!

Slowing me down a bit is a smashed finger.  The bone is fine and I didn't actually sew through my finger, but yesterday it got caught in the space between the needle assembly and the machine.  I immediately put pressure on it and after a couple minutes, when I was sure it wasn't going to bleed anymore, I smeared some Neosporin on it and wrapped it in gauze and a bandaid.  I'm good.  Yeah, it's still a little tender, but I'll live.

My Emma has a half-day of school, so I think I'll take her out for lunch.  And later...guild night!  I have to pack up my sewing machine, rotary cutter, rulers & mat, and bring a few things to work on.  It's the night that they do all their charity quilts, so it'll be fun!  I also have a stack of batting leftovers that one gal, Rosie, pieces together for the charity quilts.  Waste not!